Starting this month, Korea's transport ministry has introduced a new licence plate numbering system.<br />However, the government is still working to reduce the confusion caused by outdated parking management systems.<br />Park Se-young has more.<br />From now on, license plates will come with an extra number.<br />This is the first change to the license plates in 13 years …since the plates turned white from green in 2006.<br />Two years earlier in 2004, the Korean government omitted the names of cities or provinces on license plates to reduce regionalism.<br />The number of available registration numbers ran out at the end of last year, with the number of registered cars surpassing 23 million.<br />The inclusion of an extra digit is expected to increase the number of available combinations by about 210 million.<br />"Existing number plates can be used as they are. Any new vehicles that are registered will receive the eight-character plates."<br />To recognize these new number plates, around 22-thousand facilities nationwide need to update their plate recognition systems.<br />By the end of August, 87-point-six percent of those facilities were supposed to have been updated.<br />Of that number, public facilities made up 97-point-nine percent and private facilities like hospitals and shopping malls made up 70-point-four percent.<br />This means that cars with new plates will have difficulties entering or exiting three out of ten private facilities.<br />Starting September, an estimated 150-thousand cars each month will be given new license plates.<br />To minimize inconvenience to drivers, the transport ministry and local government bodies will encourage the arrangement of manpower to manually calculate parking charges and open parking barriers.<br />They will also form a response team in each region to respond to complaints.<br />Park Se-young, Arirang News.<br />
